UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime

The UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNCATOC) is the first global agreement to address organized crime comprehensively. With its three protocols, it provides an international legal framework to improve the enforcement of laws against organized crime, particularly through international cooperation. Although this legal framework is a remarkable step toward better action on organized crime, the key definition of organized criminal group provided by Article 2 is extremely broad and may result in the excessive expansion of the scope of these legal instruments. As a result, efforts and resources may be dispersed and not concentrated on the most serious forms of organized crime.

The process of elaboration of the convention started in the first half of the 1990s and lasted several years. The convention was adopted ...